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    Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane's Bill
    Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane's Bill
    Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane's Bill
    Ebook159 pages3 hours

    Zen Poems of China and Japan: The Crane's Bill

    By Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto

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    “Excellent . . . A fine introduction to Chinese and Japanese Zen poetry for all readers” from the editors of Zen Poetry: Let the Spring Breeze Enter (Choice).
     
    Capturing in verse the ageless spirit of Zen, these 150 poems reflect the insight of famed masters from the ninth century to the nineteenth. The translators, in collaboration with Zen Master Taigan Takayama, have furnished illuminating commentary on the poems and arranged them as to facilitate comparison between the Chinese and Japanese Zen traditions. The poems themselves, rendered in clear and powerful English, offer a unique approach to Zen Buddhism, “compared with which,” as Lucien Stryk writes, “the many disquisitions on its meaning are as dust to living earth. We see in these poems, as in all important religious art, East or West, revelations of spiritual truths touched by a kind of divinity.”
     
    “One of the most intimate and dynamic books yet published on Zen.” —Sanford Goldstein, Arizona Quarterly
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherOpen Road Integrated Media
    Release dateDec 1, 2007
    ISBN9780802198266
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      Book preview

      Zen Poems of China and Japan - Lucien Stryk

      ZEN POEMS OF CHINA & JAPAN

      by Lucien Stryk

      World of the Buddha

      Heartland: Poets of the Midwest (I and II)

      Encounter with Zen: Writings on Poetry and Zen

      POETRY

      Taproot

      The Trespasser

      Notes for a Guidebook

      The Pit and Other Poems

      Awakening

      Selected Poems

      The Duckpond

      Zen Poems

      Edited and Translated by Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto

      Zen: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews

      Afterimages: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi

      The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry

      by Takashi Ikemoto

      Zen: Weg Zur Erleuchtung

      ZEN POEMS OF CHINA & JAPAN

      THE CRANE’S BILL

      TRANSLATED BY LUCIEN STRYK

      AND TAKASHI IKEMOTO WITH THE ASSISTANCE OF

      TAIGAN TAKAYAMA. ZEN MASTER

      Copyright © 1973 by Lucien Stryk, Takashi Ikemoto, and Taigan Takayama

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

      Published simultaneously in Canada

      Printed in the United States of America

      Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      The Crane’s bill

              1. Zen poetry, Chinese—Translations into English. 2. Zen poetry, Japanese—Translations into English. 3. Zen poetry, English—Translations from Chinese. 4. Zen poetry, English—Translations from Japanese. I. Stryk, Lucien. II. Ikemoto, Takaski, 1906–. III. Takayama, Taigan.

      PL2658.E3C68 1987    895.1’1’0080382    87-7450

      eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-9826-6

      Drawings by Raymond Davidson

      Grove Press

      an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

      841 Broadway

      New York, NY 10003

      Distributed by Publishers Group West

      www.groveatlantic.com

      This volume is dedicated to the memory of

      Takashi Ikemoto, and to that of Zenkei Shibayama,

      late Abbot of Nanzenji Temple, Kyoto.

      Thanks are due to the following periodicals in whose pages some of these poems have appeared: 12 Death Poems of the Chinese Zen Masters, Stinktree, American Poetry Review, Chicago Review, Literature East & West, New: American and Canadian Poetry, New Statesman, Seizure, and Transpacific.

      CONTENTS

      Foreword by Taigan Takayama

      Introduction by Takashi Ikemoto

      Preface: Zen Poetry by Lucien Stryk

      CHINA

      Enlightenment

      Death

      General

      JAPAN

      Enlightenment

      Death

      General

      NOTES

      LUCIEN STRYK’s Selected Poems was published in 1976, and his poems and essays have appeared widely. Among the awards he has received for poetry and translation was The Islands and Continents Translation Award (1978), and he has held a National Translation Center Grant and a National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship. He is editor of World of the Buddha, the anthologies Heartland: Poets of the Midwest (I and II), and has brought out a book of essays, Encounter with Zen: Writings on Poetry and Zen. With Takashi Ikemoto, Stryk has translated, among other volumes, Zen: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews; Afterimages: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi; and The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry. A spoken record of translations and original poems, Zen Poems, was issued by Folkways Records in 1980. Stryk has given poetry readings, and has lectured throughout the United States and England, and has held a Ful-bright Travel/Research Grant and two visiting lectureships in Japan. He teaches Oriental literature and poetry at Northern Illinois University.

      TAKASHI IKEMOTO, whodied in 1980, was educated in English literature at Kyushu University, was Emeritus Professor of Yama-guchi University, and taught English literature at Otemonga-kuin University in Ibaraki City, near Kyoto. He was a Zen follower of long standing, and co-translated into Japanese a volume of Thomas Merton’s essays on Zen and Enomiya-Lasalle’s Zen: Weg Zur Erleuchtung. His major concern for years was the introduction of Zen literature to the West, and he collaborated with Lucien Stryk on a number of Zen works, including Zen: Poems, Prayers, Sermons, Anecdotes, Interviews; Afterimages: Zen Poems of Shinkichi Takahashi; and The Penguin Book of Zen Poetry.

      TAIGAN TAKAYAMA, Zen master, was recently named a successor to Zenkei Shibayama Roshi, Abbot of Nanzenji, Kyoto, one of the most important Zen temples in Japan. He graduated in History of Chinese Philosophy from Kyoto University in 1951, at which time he began his studies at Nanzenji. In 1958, he was appointed chief priest of Toshuhji Temple in Yamaguchi. Director of the Council of Social Welfare of his city, and of the prefectural Association for the Protection of Cultural Properties, he is also Director of the Yamaguchi Orphanage, which is subsidized by the prefecture and is located on the grounds of Toshunji.

      FOREWORD

      Alas, seeing, I saw him not; meeting, I met him not. Now I repent and bemoan it as much as I did then. This sentence is found in a monumental inscription Butei (464–549), Emperor of Ryo, compiled in memory of Bodaidaruma (Bodhidharma in Sanskrit), the first Zen Patriarch in China. Butei was called Emperor Buddha-mind, so faithfully did he devote himself to the Buddhist’s good works. In his days Buddhists vied with one another in translating and annotating Indian sutras, building temples, carving or casting Buddhist images or providing for bonzes (monks); and he was the foremost Buddhist of the day. It was around 520 that Daruma arrived in China from India. Butei, receiving him in audience, told him that he had accumulated a great number of merits. To which Daruma replied, No merit. Daruma’s bit of repartee was apparently intended to be a radical criticism of the Buddhism of that time, a type of Buddhism engrossed in trivialities, ignoring the prime essential to the Buddhist, i.e., awakening to the Real Self. What the Patriarch wanted to convey was not that there was no need of supporting Buddhist communities, etc., but rather that to be engrossed in trifles in ignorance of the essential was meaningless and of no avail. As long as one did not lose sight of the essence of Buddhism, one would be able to behave with real profit like the then Buddhist followers. However, Butei failed to grasp Daruma’s intent; and the latter left him and settled down in Shorin Temple beyond the Yangtze River. When Butei heard of the Patriarch’s death, which occurred many years later, he, with great repentance, erected the monument mentioned above. This then is what happened to the intelligent emperor, and one is reminded of how unaccountable are the encounters of life.

      This book is a joint effort of the three of us. Years ago, through Professor Takashi Ikemoto’s introduction, I had a talk with Luden Stryk in my temple, which eventually led to the publication of this volume. Our encounter was not of such fundamental significance as that of Daruma and Butei, and yet I deeply feel the mystery of karma in life.

      In this Foreword I would like to discuss briefly how Zen and Zen poetry are related to one another. First, let me consider the essentials of Zen. The most important thing in Zen is, as Daruma pointed out, to awaken to the Real Self. It is to become conscious of the Formless Self; it means going beyond not only spatial or material forms, but psychic or conceptual forms as well, that is, truth/falsehood, beauty/ugliness, good/evil, etc. This Zen type of Self-consciousness cannot be treated as an object as in psychology or metaphysics. Ordinary self-consciousness, which can be treated in that way, is a differentiated and limited one, having a form. The Self-consciousness of Zen is what can in no way be objectified or differentiated, because it invariably remains the subject instead of becoming an object. In Zen, awakening to the Real Self is termed seeing into one’s nature (kensho in Japanese). An ancient master restated it as "seeing is nature."

      Thus the Zennist’s Self-consciousness is totally devoid of form.

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